Perspectives
July 19, 2024 | By Dan O’Donnell
Policy Issues
Culture

A Perfectly Ordinary Convention

Dan O’Donnell reflects on a flawless Republican National Convention, which elevated the voices of everyday Americans, and an emboldened conservative movement which now must get to work for them.

Everything that happened over the past week, it seemed, happened for a reason. Former President Donald Trump was spared from an assassin’s bullet by mere millimeters, the next day he flew to the ultimate blue-collar city and presided over a convention that simultaneously celebrated both a miracle and the mundane.

He announced a running mate born in a forgotten backwater but who rose to become a decorated Marine, a bestselling author, and a United States Senator. And he elevated the voices of those who come from similarly humble backgrounds but who yearn for a similar American Dream that over the past three years has never seemed more out of reach.

They were the stars of the show—the fiery mother from New York, the noble 98-year-old D-Day veteran from New Berlin—set in the perfectly ordinary Milwaukee. In hindsight, this was a Convention that could only have happened here, a running mate who could only be picked in this moment, and a candidate who could only be Donald Trump.

This Convention didn’t just nominate him, it signaled a fundamental and likely permanent change for the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Once the party of the country club elite, it for four days in Milwaukee committed itself to the cause of the ordinary Americans who once formed the backbone of the Democratic Party but have long ago been abandoned by it.

Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance’s acceptance speech perfectly captured this new Republican ethos. His youthful energy tempered by a warm, calm demeanor that perfectly complements Trump’s bombast, Vance summed up the overarching message of the Convention and, more generally the Trump campaign: The GOP understands the pain Democrat policies have caused you, and it's okay to vote Republican even if you aren't one.

Make no mistake, this was a speech (and a Vice Presidential nominee) aimed squarely at the heart of the traditional Democrat base; a base that now feels their party has betrayed and impoverished them.

Vance was one of them - a victim of poverty and addiction in backwater coal country - but his American dream can be all of America's if they just reject the lies about Donald Trump and the Republican Party and vote for the ideas and principles they know in their heart to be the right ones.

“We are done sacrificing supply chains to unlimited global trade, and we’re going to stamp more and more products with that beautiful label, ‘Made in the USA,’” he said. We’re going to build factories again, put people to work, making real products for American families made with the hands of American workers.

“Together we will protect the wages of American workers and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens.

“Together we will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace. No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer.”

These aren’t hollow words; this is the new Republican Party platform. Trump has succeeded in remaking the party not in his image, but in the image of his voters. They aren’t dogmatic conservatives or even have a defined political philosophy, but they know what America is and they sure as hell know that America is not what Democrats want to turn it into.

Vance, more so even than Trump himself, embodies this. With his upbringing and family background, he should be a Democrat. Democrats would expect him to be a Democrat. In another life, he might be a Democrat. But he’s not. Neither is that mother from New York or that D-Day veteran from New Berlin. They’re Republicans—one black, one white, one a big personality from a big city, another a quiet suburbanite—and they are as united as they ever have been.

No, they probably don’t agree on every issue and at one point both might have thought Trump was a boor, a buffoon, or both. But now, after nearly four years of misery culminating in a near-tragedy in Pennsylvania, we are all witness to a political miracle: Americans of all backgrounds coming together once again in support of this nation’s founding principles of liberty, prosperity, and strength in the face of adversity.

This new populist conservatism born in the Tea Party and raised in the MAGA movement fully came of age in Milwaukee this week, and now it’s ready to take back this country.

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